Giving employees family-friendly workplaces is good for business, too | Opinion

Sometimes it takes a crisis to force us to pivot and to see clearly what could have been all along. As we look with hope to the post-vaccine period, there are some pandemic trends I wouldn’t want to see reversed — chief among them, greater flexibility for remote work and staggered hours, and the fuller understanding afforded working parents.

We already know that children benefit from family-friendly practices and policies, allowing parents to respond to children’s needs and mitigating stresses about their health and care. In this way, family-friendly businesses contribute to raising kindergarten readiness, a human and economic imperative.

Pre-COVID, only about half of children entering kindergarten were deemed ready to be there. For Florida, that meant more than 100,000 children each year were not meeting that critical milestone, which often correlates with strong third-grade reading levels and high school graduates who are ready for college or careers.

According to the American Community Survey, there were 885,641 Florida children under the age of 6 with working parents in 2019. This means employers, who have a direct impact on the adults most important in these children’s lives, naturally play a part in supporting soon-to-be kindergartners.

As part of our Bosses for Babies initiative, The Children’s Movement of Florida wanted to better understand family-friendly practices from the business perspective: What is the impact of childcare challenges on employment and productivity in our state, and what family-friendly benefits are offered by employers (and are desired by employees)?

Here are some highlights from our 2020 Working Parent Survey:

• Prior to the current pandemic, 44 percent of Florida parents reported that childcare challenges caused at least one productivity issue at work (such as an absence, arriving late to work or leaving early). However, during the past six months, parents reporting workforce productivity issues jumped to 65 percent.
  
  
• Across a representative sample of Florida parents, 60 percent said that childcare challenges had affected their ability to participate in the workforce or advance their careers. Among Black mothers and fathers, the percentage sits at 72 percent. When you isolate data about all mothers from fathers, that number moves to 73 percent.
  
  
• Paid time off and flexibility are consistently ranked in the top four benefits employees want. Health insurance is No. 1 when parents are asked about what best promotes loyalty. Help with childcare is key for parents when asked specifically about benefits that enhance productivity.

These insights have important implications: It’s not a favor to employees to offer family-friendly policies; rather, it is essential for recruitment, retention and productivity across a diverse workforce.

Our survey respondents shared that when employers don’t support them in taking care of their families, many of those employees leave to find employers who will. With turnover estimated to cost employers about 20 percent of an employee’s salary (this is true for nine in 10 U.S. workers, according to The Center for American Progress), this represents a real loss for businesses. Moreover, ReadyNation has shown that productivity problems because of employee childcare challenges cause employers to lose $12.7 billion annually.

In addition to the top-rated benefits mentioned, there are small changes employers could make quite easily: Provide advance notice of shift scheduling or, to the extent possible, develop a schedule with regularity and predictability for parents, which would help parents schedule childcare; allow for additional paid time off to roll over each year, which would help employees plan adequate leave for a major life event.

Such reasonable and simple changes contribute to a culture of loyalty and reliability. That leads to greater productivity and decreased turnover.

Let’s not lose this moment of clarity. When businesses support families, everyone wins.

Madeleine K. Thakur is president of The Children’s Movement of Florida, a nonprofit that advocates for a strong start for all children in the state.